Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Amor Mundi pp 81–113Cite as

Elusive Neighborliness: Hannah Arendt’s Interpretation of Saint Augustine

  • Chapter

Part of the book series: Boston College Studies in Philosophy ((MNPL,volume 26))

Abstract

Recent studies of Hannah Arendt’s thought rarely provide readers with more than a few cursory remarks for understanding the relationship between her ideas and those of Saint Augustine.1 Because her interpretation of Augustine deserves fuller attention, I want to explore the connection between Hannah Arendt and Augustine in the hope of offering a new direction for interpretation of her own thought. References to Augustine are not infrequent in some of Arendt’s better known works such as Between Past and Future, The Human Condition, and The Life of the Mind, but the principal document which establishes the link between these two thinkers is Arendt’s seldom studied doctoral dissertation, written in 1928 under the direction of Karl Jaspers and published as Der Liebesbegrijf bei Augustin.2 Using Arendt’s partially revised translation of the dissertation as the primary source for this essay, I analyze Hannah Arendt’s interpretation of Augustine there and then comment on the way the themes and the problems of the dissertation emerge in some of her other writings.3

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   149.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   199.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD   199.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. The notable exception to this is the recent biography by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl: Hannah Arendt, for love of the world (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), especially pp. 490–498.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Hannah Arendt, Der Liebesbegriff bei Augustin (Berlin: J. Springer, 1929).

    Google Scholar 

  3. Hannah Arendt, “Love and Saint Augustine. An Essay in Philosophical Interpretation,” Arendt Papers. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. The translation is thought to have been made by E.B. Ashton. Subsequent references to this document will be made under the heading “Dissertation.”

    Google Scholar 

  4. Dissertation, p. 33246. Cf. Young-Bruehl, p. 74.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Young-Bruehl, p. 52.

    Google Scholar 

  6. While still at Heidelberg, Arendt was introduced to Zionism by her friend Hans Jonas.

    Google Scholar 

  7. Hannah Arendt, “We Refugees,” Menorah Journal 31 (January, 1943), p. 65.

    Google Scholar 

  8. For Americans, it was the belief that mutual promise and human deliberation could produce good government. Cf. Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York: Penguin Books, 1963), p. 214.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Dissertation, pp. 33241, 33345.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Dissertation, pp. 33243, 33246.

    Google Scholar 

  11. Best known of the studies on love in Augustine are, John Burnaby, Amor Dei. A Study of the Religion of St. Augustine (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros (London: S.P.C.K., 1953).

    Google Scholar 

  13. For a concise summary of the controversy over possible interpretations of love in Augustine, cf. Raymond Canning, “Distinction between Love for God and Love for Neighbor in St. Augustine,” Augustiniana, 32 Nos. 1/2 (1982), pp. 5–41

    Google Scholar 

  14. Raymond Canning, “Love of Neighbor in St. Augustine,” Augustiniana, 33 Nos. 1/2 (1983), pp. 5–57.

    Google Scholar 

  15. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 242; “The Concept of History,” Between Past and Future: Six Exercises in Political Thought (New York: Viking Press, 1968), p. 73.

    Google Scholar 

  16. “The Concept of History,” p. 73.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Lewis P. Hinchman and Sandra K. Hinchman, “In Heidegger’s Shadow: Hannah Arendt’s Phenomenological Humanism,” Review of Politics 46 (April, 1984), p. 183. “Even in her most abstruse theoretical works... Arendt’s passionate concern for the present age shone through.”

    Google Scholar 

  18. Literally, “Quaestio mihi factus sum.” Cf. Dissertation, p. 33269; Saint Augustine, Confessions, trans. R.S. Pine-Coffin (New York: Penguin Books, 1984), X, 16.

    Google Scholar 

  19. Hannah Arendt, Rahel Varnhagen. The Life of a Jewish Woman, (London: East and West Library, 1958), p. 10. Arendt comments on similar problems in “Isak Dinesen: 1885–1963” in Men in Dark Times (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1968), pp. 95–109. In the view of Dinesen, too much worry about one’s identity or “self” could easily make one a “prisoner” and “slave” of that self. (p. 96).

    Google Scholar 

  20. Saint Augustine, “Homilies on I John,” in Augustine: Later Works, trans. John Burnaby, (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1955), 6, 2–4 (pp. 303–305); Young-Bruehl, p. 88.

    Google Scholar 

  21. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Viking Press, 1963), p.22.

    Google Scholar 

  22. Arendt’s response to Eric Voegelin’s commentary on the Origins of Totalitarianism contains a strong defense of her treatment of contemporary issues: “A Reply,” Journal of Politics 15 (January, 1953), pp. 78, 81.

    Google Scholar 

  23. Hannah Arendt, “Understanding and Politics,” Partisan Review 20 No. 4 (July-August, 1953), p. 390.

    Google Scholar 

  24. “Understanding and Politics,” p. 390.

    Google Scholar 

  25. Hannah Arendt, “Home to Roost,” in S.B. Warner, The American Experiment (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1976), pp. 61–77.

    Google Scholar 

  26. Arendt’s initial contact with Augustine’s thought came from Guardini’s lectures and Heidegger’s seminars. Cf. Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, “From the Pariah’s Point of View: Reflections on Hannah Arendt’s Life and Work,” in Hannah Arendt: The Recovery of the Public World ed. Melvyn A. Hill (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979), p. 6. Augustine was the perennial source of controversy and commentary in the German theological and philosophical circles of the time. His thought provided scholars with the possibility of exploring the relationship between Christian faith and Ancient philosophy. This possibility was enhanced by the fact that one could approach Augustine’s thought on love psychologically -- as a means to happiness -- or ethically and ontologically -- as obedience to God’s eternal laws in conformity to the ordo rerum. Cf. Canning, p. 7.

    Google Scholar 

  27. Hannah Arendt, “What is Existenz Philosophy?,” Partisan Review 8/1 (Winter 1946), p. 50. For a brief discussion of this point see Young-Bruehl, p. 75. William Barrett makes the same criticism. Cf. Robert Meager, An Introduction to Saint Augustine (New York: New York University Press, 1978), p. xvii. Barrett states, “If we return to Augustine after reading Heidegger, we will find the latter lacking. Heidegger’s Dasein - his incarnation of human being - does not have Augustinian love at its center, and to that degree is empty and falls short of personal being.”

    Google Scholar 

  28. Dissertation, p. 33242.

    Google Scholar 

  29. Confessions, IV, 16 (pp. 89–90).

    Google Scholar 

  30. Cf. Hannah Arendt, “We Refugees,” Menorah Journal 31 (January 1943), pp. 69–77; Human Condition, pp. 256–257; Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: World Publishing Company, 1958), p. 259.

    Google Scholar 

  31. Hannah Arendt, “On Humanity in Dark Times: Thoughts on Lessing,” (1959) Men in Dark Times, p. 4.

    Google Scholar 

  32. Dissertation, p. 33246.

    Google Scholar 

  33. Dissertation, p. 33241.

    Google Scholar 

  34. Dissertation, pp. 33243, 33244.

    Google Scholar 

  35. Dissertation, p. 33243.

    Google Scholar 

  36. Arendt does not explicitly say that charity is “pre-theological.” It emerges in a person’s faith discovery of the source of being. Thus, the creature who now has faith moves from a pre-theological sphere into one which is more properly theological. Also, it is important to note that Arendt separates the three “situations” and three concepts of love only conceptually. This, I suggest, gives the work its extremely abstract character. For the sake of clarity, Arendt’s “conceptual contexts” will be called simpy “situations.”

    Google Scholar 

  37. Dissertation, p. 33242.

    Google Scholar 

  38. Dissertation, p. 33360.

    Google Scholar 

  39. Most translations of Augustine use the word “desire.” For instance, cf. Saint Augustine, Eighty-Three Different Questions, in The Fathers of the Church, Volume 70, Hermigild Dressier, ed., (Washington: Catholic Univ. Press, 1982), 35 (p. 62). “For love is nothing more than to desire something for its own sake.”

    Google Scholar 

  40. Dissertation, p. 33252. Cf. Saint Augustine, The City of God, trans. Marcus Dods, (New York: Modem Library, 1950), XII, 20 (p. 402).

    Google Scholar 

  41. Dissertation, p. 33252. Cf. Saint Augustine, Sermons, 306, 3, 4 and 7. (Patrologia Migne, XXXVIII, 5-A, 1401, 1403).

    Google Scholar 

  42. Dissertation, 33254.

    Google Scholar 

  43. Dissertation, p. 33253. Arendt cites De libero arbitro I, 34 and Sermons 72, 61.

    Google Scholar 

  44. Dissertation, p. 33254.

    Google Scholar 

  45. Dissertation, p. 33265.

    Google Scholar 

  46. Dissertation, p. 33261.

    Google Scholar 

  47. “Homilies,” II, 12 (p. 276). Cf. Dissertation, p. 33258.

    Google Scholar 

  48. Dissertation, p. 33258. Cf. “Homilies,” II, 12 (p. 276).

    Google Scholar 

  49. Dissertation, p. 33258.

    Google Scholar 

  50. Dissertation, p. 33285.

    Google Scholar 

  51. Dissertation, p. 33287.

    Google Scholar 

  52. Dissertation, p. 33288. Cf. Confessions, X, 14 (p. 221).

    Google Scholar 

  53. Dissertation, p. 33295. Cf. Saint Augustine, The Catholic and Manichean Ways of Life in The Fathers of the Church, Volume 56, Roy Deferrari, ed., (Washington: Catholic Univ. Press, 1947), II, 6–8 (pp. 70–75).

    Google Scholar 

  54. Dissertation, p. 33296.

    Google Scholar 

  55. Dissertation, pp. 33296, 33295.

    Google Scholar 

  56. Dissertation, p. 33299.

    Google Scholar 

  57. Dissertation, p. 33300.

    Google Scholar 

  58. Dissertation, p. 33300.

    Google Scholar 

  59. Dissertation, p. 33331.

    Google Scholar 

  60. Dissertation, p. 33302.

    Google Scholar 

  61. Dissertation, p. 33320.

    Google Scholar 

  62. Dissertation, p. 33331. Saint Augustine, In Ioannis Evangelicum tractatus, 87, 4. Cf. “Homilies on the Gospel of John,” in Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. Phillip Schaff (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956), LXXXVI (p. 555).

    Google Scholar 

  63. Dissertation, p. 33341.

    Google Scholar 

  64. Dissertation, p. 33334.

    Google Scholar 

  65. Dissertation, p. 33349. cf. “Homilies on I John,” I, 3 (p. 261). “They have seen, and we have not; yet we are their fellows, because we hold a common faith.”

    Google Scholar 

  66. Dissertation, p. 33350.

    Google Scholar 

  67. Dissertation, p. 33350.

    Google Scholar 

  68. Dissertation, p. 33351. In a footnote on page 33367 Arendt writes, “Cf. how Christ and Adam are coordinated throughout pursuant to Rom. V. 12–21, as in Pecc. mer. et rem. I, 16, for instance.”

    Google Scholar 

  69. Dissertation, p. 33352. For examples of Augustine’s thoughts on what binds human society together see, Saint Augustine, De diver sis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum in Augustine: Earlier Writings, trans. John Burleigh (London: SCM Press, 1953) I, 16. (p. 398). “Human society is knit together by transactions of giving and receiving, and things are given and received sometimes as debts and sometimes not.”; De fide rerum quae non videntur, in The Fathers of the Church, Volume 2, ed. Ludwig Schopp, (New York: CIMA, 1947), 4 (pp. 454–455). “If this faith in human affairs is removed, who will not mark how great will be their disorder and what dreadful confusion will follow? -- Therefore, when we do not believe what we cannot see, concord will perish and human society will itself not stand firm.”

    Google Scholar 

  70. Dissertation, p. 33360.

    Google Scholar 

  71. Dissertation, p. 33364.

    Google Scholar 

  72. Dissertation, p. 33365.

    Google Scholar 

  73. Dissertation, p. 33366.

    Google Scholar 

  74. Dissertation, p. 33360.

    Google Scholar 

  75. Dissertation, p. 33362, 33363, 3364.

    Google Scholar 

  76. Human Condition, p. 10–11n.

    Google Scholar 

  77. For an opposing view, see, Philip Rieff, “The Theology of Politics: Reflections on Totalitarianism as the Burden of Our Times,” Journal of Religion 32 (April, 1952), pp. 119–126.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  78. Human Condition, p. 40

    Google Scholar 

  79. Human Condition, p. 269.

    Google Scholar 

  80. Human Condition, p. 286. Cf. Origins of Totalitarianism, p. 302. “... man is only the master, not the creator of the world.”

    Google Scholar 

  81. Hannah Arendt, “Remarks at American Society of Christian Ethics,” unpublished conference given on January 21, 1973. (Library of Congress), 11839 (p. 12).

    Google Scholar 

  82. “Remarks,” 11835 (p. 8).

    Google Scholar 

  83. Hannah Arendt, “What is Freedom?,” in Between Past and Future, p. 146. It is worthwhile noting that Arendt views Augustine (following St. Paul) as being the source of freedom’s “first appearance in our philosophical tradition,” in the experience of religious conversion. Cf. also, On Revolution, pp. 124, 232–234, 301–302.

    Google Scholar 

  84. Myths used to answer fundamental questions could also be employed as political instruments. See, for example, Arendt’s discussion of how the doctrine of Hell in Plato and later in Christianity served political ends in “Religion and Politics,” Confluence 2 No. 3 (September, 1953), pp. 105–126, pp. 121–125.

    Google Scholar 

  85. “What is Freedom?,” p. 145. Here Arendt tries to show how freedom and politics coincide. “... the philosophical tradition has distorted... the very idea of freedom... by transposing it from its original field, the realm of politics and human affairs in general, to an inward domain...”

    Google Scholar 

  86. Origins of Totalitarianism, p. 234.

    Google Scholar 

  87. Human Condition, p. 52; Dissertation, p. 33258.

    Google Scholar 

  88. Origins of Totalitarianism, p. 301.

    Google Scholar 

  89. Dissertation, p. 33301.

    Google Scholar 

  90. Human Condition, p. 177.

    Google Scholar 

  91. “Religion and Politics,” p. 124.

    Google Scholar 

  92. Perhaps the most frequently cited reference to Augustine in the works of Arendt comes from the City of God, XII, 20. “That there might be a beginning, man was created before whom nobody was.” “Understanding and Politics,” p. 390; Human Condition, p. 117; “Willing,” in The Life of the Mind (New York: Harcourt, 1978), pp. 108–109.

    Google Scholar 

  93. Human Condition, p. 19.

    Google Scholar 

  94. Human Condition, p. 21.

    Google Scholar 

  95. Human Condition, p. 55

    Google Scholar 

  96. “The Concept of History,” pp. 48, 51, 52.

    Google Scholar 

  97. On Revolution, pp. 233–235.

    Google Scholar 

  98. This is Arendt’s interpretation. Dissertation, p. 3314. The interpretation is plausible, even if her reasoning seems faulty. She makes three basic points: that the principal question about love in Augustine is not “whether to love at all but what to love” (Sermons 34, 2); that the world is constituted by the “lovers of the world”; that for the person born into the world, “love of the world is never a choice, for the world is always there, and to love it is natural” (p. 33314). If there is a flaw in her reasoning it seems to derive from the “twofold” concept of the world she sees in Augustine which is, after all, only one concept looked at from different standpoints. In my reading of Augustine, the world is loved naturally, not only because humans constitute it, but also because it is the “fabric” of heaven and earth which has no human source. Cf. “Sermon I,” in Selected Sermons of Saint Augustine, trans., ed., Quincy Howe (New York: Holt, 1966) 34 (p. 3).

    Google Scholar 

  99. The moral dimension enters primarily because the “new social life, based on Christ, is defined by mutual love.” The fact that one’s “relation to the other ceases to be a matter of course... is expressed in the commandment of love.” Dissertation, p. 33362.

    Google Scholar 

  100. Dissertation, p. 33284.

    Google Scholar 

  101. Human Condition, p. 247.

    Google Scholar 

  102. Judith N. Shklar, “Hannah Arendt as Pariah,” Partisan Review 50 No. 1 (1983), pp. 64–77.

    Google Scholar 

  103. Hannah Arendt, “The Jew as Pariah: A Hidden Tradition,” (1944) in The Jew as Pariah: Jewish Identity and Politics in the Modern Age, ed., Ron H. Feldman (New York: Grove Press, 1978), p. 76.

    Google Scholar 

  104. Rahel Varnhagen, p. 174.

    Google Scholar 

  105. Rahel Varnhagen, pp. 181, 184. Note how Varnhagen, model of the pariah, fought for “her stolen natural existence.” She finally became a Saint-Simonist.

    Google Scholar 

  106. Dissertation, p. 33341.

    Google Scholar 

  107. Hannah Arendt, “On Violence,” Crises of the Republic (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1969), pp. 127–128; “Home to Roost,” p. 68.

    Google Scholar 

  108. Human Condition, p. 126.

    Google Scholar 

  109. In the dissertation Arendt makes a point of showing that Augustine does not share St. Paul’s thoughts on human perfectibility. Dissertation, p. 33276; On the question of progress see, “On Violence,” pp. 127–128.

    Google Scholar 

  110. “Homilies on I John,” 8, 10 (p. 324).

    Google Scholar 

  111. Human Condition, p. 6.

    Google Scholar 

  112. “Homilies on I John,” 6, 2–4 (pp. 303–305).

    Google Scholar 

  113. Human Condition, p. 242. Arendt writes, “love, by its very nature, is unworldly, and it is for this reason rather than its rarity that it is not only apolitical but antipolitical, perhaps the most powerful of all antipolitical human forces.”

    Google Scholar 

  114. Dissertation, pp. 33351, 33364.

    Google Scholar 

  115. Arendt acknowledges this dimension of Augustine’s thought. Dissertation, p. 33315.

    Google Scholar 

  116. Hannah Arendt, “What is Authority?,” Between Past and Future, p. 141.

    Google Scholar 

  117. Young-Bruehl, p. 449.

    Google Scholar 

  118. Hannah Arendt, “Civil Disobedience,” Crises of the Republic, pp. 97, 102.

    Google Scholar 

  119. “Civil Disobedience,” p. 86.

    Google Scholar 

  120. Sheldon Wolin, “Democracy and the Political,” Salmagundi 60 (Spring-Summer) 1983, p. 8.

    Google Scholar 

  121. Human Condition, p. 243.

    Google Scholar 

  122. Paul Ricoeur, “Action, Story, History,” Salmagundi 60 (Spring-Summer, 1983), p. 70.

    Google Scholar 

  123. Hannah Arendt, “Isak Dinesen: 1885–1963,” Men in Dark Times, p. 105.

    Google Scholar 

  124. Dissertation, p. 33364.

    Google Scholar 

  125. Human Condition, pp. 244–245. Arendt expresses similar thoughts in “Karl Jaspers: Citizen of the World?,” Men in Dark Times, p. 93.

    Google Scholar 

  126. “Civil Disobedience,” p. 92.

    Google Scholar 

  127. Human Condition, p. 177. City of God, XII. 20.

    Google Scholar 

  128. The Life of the Mind I (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1978), p. 23.

    Google Scholar 

  129. “... nothing is more obvious than that man... does not owe his existence to himself.” “On Violence,” p. 115. (emphasis in original); For the question about a world in which everything is possible, see Origins of Totalitarianism, Part Three.

    Google Scholar 

  130. Hannah Arendt, “The Jew as Pariah,” p. 90.

    Google Scholar 

  131. “The Concept of History,” p. 73.

    Google Scholar 

  132. “The Jew as Pariah,” p. 90; Human Condition, p. 4.

    Google Scholar 

  133. “What is Freedom?,” p. 164.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. S. J. Patrick Boyle
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Boston College, USA

    S. J. James W. Bernauer

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 1987 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Boyle, S.J.P. (1987). Elusive Neighborliness: Hannah Arendt’s Interpretation of Saint Augustine. In: Bernauer, S.J.J.W. (eds) Amor Mundi. Boston College Studies in Philosophy, vol 26. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3565-5_6

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3565-5_6

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-90-247-3484-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-009-3565-5

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation